Rob Farley : certification

Seriously cheap exams in Australia

Rob Farley — Wed, 06 May 2009 02:56:41 GMT

If you’re an MCP in Australia and you haven’t passed any exams over the past couple of years (since July 1, 2007), then Microsoft has an offer at the moment to let you do an exam for only US$25 (until June 30, 2009). Ok, so that means the price really depends on the value of the Aussie dollar, but either way, it’s not a bad opportunity.

The offer is only on for a very short time, but why not check out http://www.learnandcertify.com/mcpupgrade/ and see what you can do? I’m thinking it’s a nice opportunity to knock over one of those Upgrade exams to get yourself from MCITP:SQL2005 to MCITP:SQL2008. You don’t get a second shot with this one, and you can only get one voucher – but it’s so cheap you may as well try it.

Things You Know Now

Rob Farley — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:44:00 GMT

This blog meme is doing the rounds… I’ve been tagged at least twice now (Jason Strate and Greg Linwood), so I suppose subconsciously I’ve been thinking about this stuff for a few weeks already.

Since I do a lot of training, I tend to explain these things to my students anyway. I have a lot of opportunity to stand up in front of people and tell them important stuff – so this kind of thing definitely comes up now and then.

Things I wish I had known years ago (career-wise that I would teach new people in the SQL field)

The Importance of technical communities

I remember when Craig Bailey wrote about his ideal role. It wasn’t new stuff – I had heard it all before, but it certainly got me thinking about how people can influence where they are in that Venn diagram. For Craig, he wanted his ideal role to be a job that he was good at and that he enjoyed. Obviously to be a job, someone has to be prepared to pay him sufficiently too.

Being good at something you enjoy isn’t hard, and you can invest your own time (outside of the job that you don’t enjoy) developing your skills. For people in IT, I suggest they pick a particular area they find interesting, and start getting their skills up. If they can become expert-level in that area, then great.

The next problem though, is moving that skill into something that lets you can earn money. Community can help that. Community can help you develop your skills, because you’re spending time with other people in your field. But as you become an expert, presenting at community events, developing a profile, you find yourself being differentiated from the rest. If nothing else, people know you have presentation skills. Every presentation can become like a job interview – showing your skills and ability to communicate information to clients, colleagues, whoever.

Presenting isn’t easy, but there are plenty of other communities that can help develop those skills. You can get along to a ToastMasters group, or offer to do presentations in a group to which you already belong.

You might be the best in the world at what you do – but you need to get out there. I enjoy the technical communities, and run the Adelaide SQL Server User Group because I enjoy it. But I can’t deny that it’s been useful for my career. Now, I’m wishing that I had got involved many years ago.

Enjoy public speaking

According to the old saying, more people are afraid of public speaking than death (so at a funeral, they’d rather be in the coffin than giving the eulogy). But it’s a useful skill to have, so learn to enjoy it.

Keep in touch with old friends

This isn’t quite so career-related, but is actually very important for your career nonetheless.

There are people that I haven’t seen in years, who I have no idea how to contact. Facebook (and the internet in general) has proved very useful for that, but still there are many people that I wish I could find. Most of them are just people I would like to spend time with now and then, but some are people that I’d happily offer to do some work for. And perhaps some of them would contact me to do some consulting if they knew how to reach me (clue, there’s contact information to the side of my blog site!).

Far too many people fall out our lives, and it’s sad. I’m still not great at it, but I do think I should take the time to write people letters now and then (emails, Facebook comments, Instant Messages are all fine too – I’m just talking about touching base to keep the contact there).

Certifications aren’t worth studying for (but they are worth taking)

I used to study for exams. I first became a Microsoft Certified Professional back in 1998, passing an exam called “Architecture I”. Since then I’ve passed over 30 exams, and earned plenty of certifications. But a few years ago I worked out at that it’s just not worth studying for these things.

A MCP exam is not like high school or university. If you fail, you can just try again. Fails don’t appear on your transcript, only the passes do. It’s like your driving test – if you fail, you just try again. Once you pass, you get access to the roads like everyone else.

If you spend weeks studying for a MCP exam, you probably won’t even improve your chances of passing – you’ll just be spending precious family time trying to learn those things to get you past the line. You might even start losing sleep over it.

Nowadays, I tell my students (and myself) to care less. Plenty of people say “No, you don’t understand – I can’t fail at anything.”, and I understand that. I’m not particularly good with failure either. But I’ve learned to not care so much. I don’t want to waste time sitting an exam only find that I fail (or spend $180 on the privilege), but I also don’t want to waste time studying for an exam that I could probably pass anyway. With the Second Shot offer that is often around you’ve paid for two attempts, so go into the first one blind.

The amount of time you invest in getting a certification is largely the study time. So if you can reduce that, the certification becomes a lot cheaper – in which case, it’s probably worth taking the few hours to give it a try. If you do fail, you know you have a weak area, so you can improve that with study – just don’t bother studying before the first try.

[Edited: I should make it very clear that I definitely approve of learning new skills, and preparation for an exam is a great prompt for this learning. Better still is learning for the sake of getting those new skills, with the focus being an upcoming project or new role. My advice above is focussed on people who have the skills necessary to pass an exam.]

Reading execution plans, and understanding indexes

I’ve always been good at solving problems with T-SQL (or PL/SQL for that matter) – I just took to it naturally when I got into databases. But it took me several years to actual venture into understanding what the query is actually doing when it runs. Now, I look at the execution plan for every query I write, as default behaviour, and I consider the indexes that I want up front.

Perhaps it’s because I was a programmer first, but I had always trusted the compiler to do things the right way. I had looked a bit past my code when studying Prolog at university, but it took me a long time to make that my default behaviour.

So when I find people who are just getting into T-SQL, I encourage them to look at the execution plans, and start getting a feel for what’s going on behind the scenes. You can often improve a query without looking at the execution plan, but if you want to write really good T-SQL and have well-performing queries, you need to make the execution plan part of the process.

The significance of BI to businesses

I was involved in data warehouses in some of my first projects when I left university, I just didn’t realise at the time. I first got involved in SQL Server in version 6.0, and quite early on I migrated a system to 6.5, and created a data warehouse to allow for various reports. In hindsight, I was making a data warehouse. I had an ETL process, calculated aggregates, considered the dimensions and granularity, all that. But it wasn’t called a data warehouse, and I only realised a few years later that it really was one.

If I had’ve realised, then I’m sure I would’ve jumped into the BI space much earlier. Companies love BI – it’s one of the most empowering areas of database technology for any business.

I’ve picked a few things here – and I hope people somehow get some benefit from reading it. I have put it in my ‘must read’ list to find other people’s responses, because I’m sure there are things that I’m still to learn.

Tagging some other people: Simon Sabin, Jamie Thomson, Deepak Kapoor, Grant Paisley

Reasons to consider certification

Rob Farley — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 07:51:29 GMT

I saw a link to a report by TechRepublic giving reasons to value certification in 2009. The idea behind the piece is that we are in a time of economic crisis, cutbacks and the like, and asking the question about whether or not people should be looking for certification or not.

Most of the points made come down to differentiating yourself from the masses. For individuals I would have to agree. If you are trying to get a job, and are looking for every possible argument to get yourself in the door, certification can’t hurt (don’t expect to beat someone with experience though). But from a company’s perspective, should a company be looking to train employees (and encourage certification)?

As a trainer, I’m going to flippantly say “Yes, you should send all your staff on training…”

…but don’t worry – I’m going to try to back it up as well.

At the moment, almost every company in the world is trying to cut costs. Whole departments are being sacked if they’re not being effective. And one thing that might differentiate your department from the next one could well be the skill level. You need to lift your game to be able to compete at the moment, so why not get your whole department trained up in an area that concerns you. If your team writes software, make sure they’re writing software as well as possible. If your team is in sales, you had better make sure that your salespeople are as good at making that deal as possible. Training can help with this.

And actually, certification can help too. If there is a certification available in a relevant area, and someone has the time to go and sit the exam, then get them to do it. It rarely costs much, and it will probably help your department if you can say “Our people are getting stronger”, or “Our people are active in professional development”. Not to mention the confidence boost associated with passing an exam, or the added knowledge gained by studying (if required).

If you’re reading this and thinking “Well my boss doesn’t see it that way…”, why not ask if getting certification might help the department’s viability? If the answer is no, then you’re probably no better off. But if the answer is yes, well… you might get some training and some new skills.

70-113, the Virtual Lab exam, gives Microsoft Certification new hope

Rob Farley — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:51:11 GMT

We all know what's wrong with Microsoft certifications. The multiple-choice format means that people can cheat too easily, and over the years, the questions have often felt too specific, asking the kinds of questions that proper IT professionals just look up in Help systems like SQL Books Online.

To help address this problem, Microsoft started to come up with simulation questions. They were used in some Windows NT exams, and most notably for me (as I helped write them), in the core SQL Server exam 70-431. These were Flash-style applications designed to look and feel like the real applications. This is good, but they're not error-prone (people who have sat 70-431 will know of a particular error in one of the drop-down boxes), and they can only really test usage of the UI. Definitely an improvement on multiple-choice though, and when writing these questions, special effort was made to find things that would make cheating very difficult.

The biggest problem with simulations is that people have different ways to achieve their goals. "More than one way to skin a cat" as the expression goes. This is increasingly so with technologies like PowerShell coming into almost every area of server administration, and particularly applies to developer exams where the goal should be achieving something to satisfy a unit test rather than answering a particular knowledge question.

And especially for SQL Server. Most DBAs will use T-SQL to perform the tasks they do on a daily basis. Some will use Management Studio, others will use sqlcmd, or pre-created scripts. Recently, quite a few people will have started using PowerShell, particularly if they are already using PowerShell scripts to maintain Exchange and Windows. Therefore, testing becomes more difficult.

70-113 fixes this problem completely. Whilst I don't expect to have passed (it's an exam about Active Directory, which I only know a little about), I thoroughly enjoyed the overall experience. It asked me to configure a couple of servers according to a set of instructions, and then actually gave me connections to the machines. And they were complete machines. Obviously I didn't have Internet access, but I did have the Windows Help system. This alone would have got me past a few hurdles, as I could look up a few things that I couldn't quite remember.

With SQL Server, examinees will have SQL Server Books Online available, but that's like it is in the real world. If asked to create a particular type of trigger, you can remind yourself of the syntax for that. If asked to make sure that a backup uses the COPY_ONLY option, then you can look up where that goes. But this is the problem. In 70-113, the information provided seemed to give away a little too much. It explicitly told me what to use for many of the options, but I would've preferred to have had it describe something akin to "Make sure that the full backup you take doesn't affect the next day's regular differential backup" rather than "Use the COPY_ONLY option". This way, it can test the knowledge of the system, rather than whether or not you can find the appropriate checkbox.

The other area that I would like to see is a combination of question-answer and virtual lab. I'd like to be given the connection to the server, have to configure various things, but then also answer questions. "How much free space is there in this file?", "How many times has the index with IndexID = 3 on table X been scanned?", etc. This would not only test whether you know how to configure the system, but also whether you know how to find information - a very important skill which isn't really tested yet.

70-113 is definitely a step in the right direction, and I encourage everyone to give it a try (today is the last day you can register for it). Don't feel like you need to pass, just do the exam and provide comments about what you think.

Time to try some exams? Second shot is back

Rob Farley — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:36:22 GMT

I always tell people to do exams during Second Shot season.

Reason being - it makes the first one a practice. Don't bother studying, don't bother stressing, just go and see how you do. Then you can sit it a second time for real.

Feel like giving it a go? Register at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/secondshot/default.mspx before booking.

Looking for more? Well, the SQL 2008 exams won't be around for a while, but there are a lot of other options out there.

How Jim McLeod passed 70-444

Rob Farley — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 04:44:00 GMT

Jim McLeod is a DBA, and a good friend of mine. And today, he is due congratulations, because he passed the exam 70-444 - Optimizing and Maintaining a DB Admin Solution in SQL 2005. Now he only needs to do the Infrastructure Design exam (70-443) to become MCITP:DBA.

Did he take one of the courses I teach, that Microsoft recommends to do before trying the exam? No.

Did he spend hours in study, looking for those small things that he would need? No.

Did he download one of those illegal copies of the exam? No, of course not. That would be cheating, and Jim's not like that.

So how did he pass? Easy. He's a DBA by trade, and good at his job, too! So he just booked in, sat the exam, and passed it easily. The certification wasn't trying to trip him up with tricky questions, it was just trying to find out if he really does have DBA skills. Jim does, so he passed!

Congratulations again, mate.

The best way to pass a Microsoft certification exam

Rob Farley — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 22:30:06 GMT

For a limited time only, Microsoft are giving you the chance to have a second shot at any IT professional, developer or Microsoft Dynamics exam. Brilliant!

The way this works (and the way I encourage all my students to do this) is that if you register for this offer and then take an exam, you can take it again some time later for free. Yes, free.

So now let me ask you - which one are you paying for? The first one, or the second one?

It may feel like you're paying for the first one, but don't be fooled. You're actually paying for the second one. The first is just a practice. A chance to get a feel for the exam, a chance to find out how to target your study. Don't lose sleep over the first one. If you use the product, don't even study. Just rock up and see how you go. When you leave, you'll have a piece of paper telling you the areas you didn't do so well, plus you'll know in your head that you need to study up about some particular area.

Don't consider that you get a free 'second shot'. Consider that you get a free practice exam, that comes with the bonus of giving you credit for the real one if you pass. The lack of stress in the first one will actually give you an increased chance. These exams are not a 'single-shot only' thing, like university or high-school. Accept that the first sitting is a learning experience, and pay for the second.

Latest news on 70-431 simulation questions

Rob Farley — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 11:58:00 GMT

I got some news this week about the core SQL Server 2005 exam. A bit of an update from someone who has recently tried 70-431. He sent it to me having read my previous post on the matter.

"I took the exam last week and got all the M/C questions right, but did horribly on the simulations. I figured out couple of them, but I couldn't do the others. Ended up with a score of 220. This is the first certification test I've encountered that used such a large set of simulations (15 on the test I took).

"Good job! I had no business passing this test, since I know nothing about SQL Server. This will add a degree of difficulty to the certs, but not insurmountable."

I wish this guy a bit of luck with the exam, but I'm very pleased that despite his knowledge of the multiple-choice questions (he must've had inside knowledge to get 100% right) didn't help him pass.

My tip for you (reader) is: Use the product! And if you have been using the product for a while, just try the exam. Worst case, you fail and can try it again once you've used the product some more. Don't bother cheating - if you're worth your stuff, you should be able to pass the exam easily.

Only 71 people have MCITP:BI

Rob Farley — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 06:31:30 GMT

Mitch Wheat sent me this. According to http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/certified.mspx, there are only 71 people in the world (well, at the end of June) who have achieved MCITP:BI. This means passing the two exams 70-445 and 70-446. You could be one if you use SSIS, SSAS, SSRS and do a bit of Data Mining. Doing some of the courses like the ones offered by Solid Quality Learning might help too, of course.

Pearson Vue no longer offering Microsoft exams

Rob Farley — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:38:53 GMT

You can only book to do Microsoft certification exams through Pearson Vue until the end of August. From then on, you have to choose Prometric. More information can be read at Vue's website: http://vue.com/ms/testtakerfaq.pdf

Personally, I find this a real shame. It's good for us candidates to have a choice. I've preferred Vue over Prometric in recent years, and it was Vue who provided exams at TechEd Australia. I don't know the reasons why Microsoft have taken this approach, but will post again once I have found out something (assuming the information I find out is public).

Certification questions from the community

Rob Farley — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 12:56:11 GMT

On a trip to Redmond earlier this year (when I was one of 6 people deciding on content for the 70-445 and 70-446 exams), I had the chance to meet Howard Dierking. Howard is the Product Planner for Developer and Database Certifications. It was great to meet him - he has a lot of enthusiasm for certifications, and really wants to do the best he can to make them right.

Anyway, during our conversation, we talked about the possibility of getting the community to write questions. In July last year I had spent two weeks writing the simulation questions for 70-431 (along with three other experts), and although I think generally we did well, and I get a lot of good feedback on them, I don't think that this is the best way of getting questions. Especially not multiple-choice questions.

The biggest problem I see with the Microsoft certifications is that they're not worth much. Too many people consider that MS certifications are pointless, and that people who know their trade actually tend to not be certified. Now, I don't think this is really the case, but certainly there's an argument for saying that the MS certs are too easy to get (compared to Oracle, Cisco, etc). Especially with brain-dumps out there to help people cheat.

Yes, cheat. Using brain-dumps is cheating. Since I wrote my earlier post about 70-431, I have had lots of people write to me asking for brain-dumps about the simulation questions. I tell them to use the product, to learn the skills, and to not cheat. Sometimes I offer to pass their details to Microsoft, but I know this is just a childish reaction. It just grates, because I want these certifications to be worth something.

So how to stop cheating? Well, one method is to increase the size of the pool of questions. Then people will have more trouble learning the cheat answers. But getting people to write questions is expensive for Microsoft. So how to address it? Well, one method is to get the community to write them. The community is very giving, and if you get a hundred people to donate a question each, you'll probably get 50 decent questions. If you can get them to write a handful each, then that's moving along nicely. You still have to put those questions through vetting processes, but that's much less expensive than getting them written in the first place.

I'm very pleased to see that Howard has been progressing this idea some more. If you're keen to help, then drop him a line (via his blog I guess).

And I encourage you to do this. If you have a Microsoft Certification, or are considering getting one, you should do what you can to make these certifications worth more. Making the exams harder, better, more relevant - that's achieved with having a larger pool of questions, written by experts like you.

70-431 exam tips, and congrats to Jos Verbaken - MCTS

Rob Farley — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 07:08:57 GMT

Jos Verbaken was a student of mine a few weeks ago. He lives in Ballarat, and is known around the Melbourne SQL Server User Group circles. He did the 5-day course 2780 - Maintaining a Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Database. During the course, I encouraged the students to sit the exam 70-431, which the exam I wrote simulation questions for, and the exam which is half covered by the content in Course 2780 (the other half being from the 'Implementing' course 2779).

I did my standard trick of telling the students to take a chance on the exam without studying - just to find out what to expect from the exam, and to see which areas you feel you need to learn. Without the stress of feeling you have to pass, people are often more likely to get through it. Also, as the exams are designed to test your ability in the area, not just your ability to learn to pass the exam, you shouldn't have to study much. Most of all, the Microsoft certification exams are not like exams at university or high-school - you can try multiple times.

With 70-431, there are many simulation questions. The only real way you can learn about these is to use them. It's the best argument for doing a course as part of your study, because you get to use labs which cover lots of the GUI ways of doing things. I suppose maybe it helps being taught by someone who wrote the content, although I'm not about to give any hints about what you might need to know about to pass the exam. My biggest hint really is to just try it. Worst case you spend A$180 / US$125 and come out with a bunch of ideas about what you should spend time learning.

Of course, Jos didn't need to worry at all. He tried the exam recently and passed. That makes him a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in the area of SQL Server 2005. Well done, mate!

My good friend Mitch Wheat (in Perth) passed some exams recently too, and is now an MCPD at least twice over. Thoroughly deserved, Mitch!

BI Certified

Rob Farley — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 23:45:00 GMT

Like Darren Gosbell, I took the beta exams for the two new SQL2005 Business Intelligence exams. Like Darren, following the beta period I was invited to help with the exam development process, and now that the results have come out, like Darren, I have two new certifications. MCTS: Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Business Intelligence and MCITP: Business Intelligence Developer.

I received invites to do beta exams in TFS and VSTO, but the beta period timing is bad for me, and I don't think I'm going to get to do them.

Two new certifications

Rob Farley — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 00:31:00 GMT

Seems I have two new Microsoft Technology Specialist certifications. MCTS: Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services 3.0: Configuration and MCTS: Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007: Configuration. The links are to the exams I passed, not the certifications themselves. Seems the cert sites don't quite exist yet.

I sat the exams in November, during the beta period. I got the results in the past week. Seems these two exams each earn you a MCTS certification.

Simulation questions in 70-431

Rob Farley — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 04:35:00 GMT

Earlier this year I was one of four people who wrote a bunch of simulation questions for 70-431. Today I heard from someone who has sat the exam with that content in it. It's great to get feedback on them, because it really helps Microsoft Learning work out how to improve the exams even more.

If you're reading this and have done the exam with the simulation content, please feel free to drop me a line (rob_farley at hotmail.com)telling me what you thought of them. Don't comment on my blog, because that's public... but feel free to send me an email directly to let me know your thoughts. If you're worried about non-disclosure, you can confirm I've done the exam myself by checking out my MCP transcript - use 707979 and Adelaide to get access.

On learning (Calvin and Hobbes, the ACS and digital natives)

Rob Farley — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 01:52:00 GMT

Digital natives learn differently. How do we take advantage of that? The funny thing is that right away, I've written this from an external perspective, when I'm probably in a mixture of both camps. Feel free to consider me in either camp as you...(read more)

What's wrong with IT?

Rob Farley — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 00:57:00 GMT

To a large degree, it's the perception of experience. The IT industry has so many things wrong with it. It tends to be 'governed' (I don't know of a better word for what I mean there, 'run' would be wrong) by people in their 50s...(read more)

How they know you know

Rob Farley — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 01:48:00 GMT

There have been many times over the years when someone has asked me to assess someone's skills. Usually this is by looking at a CV, but it has also involved talking to them in an interview setting.

For any potential employer, the hiring process is painful. They know they need someone, but typically they don't really know who they need. Could be they need to hire someone to join a team, in which case they can ask the team what kind of person they would like. But often they just know that they need someone to do a particular job.

First step, they need to write a job specification. Great. What they really want to write is "We need someone to be able to fix up this stuff" - but they actually have very little idea about what skills may be required for that. So they put criteria like "Must be good with people" and "Must have experience in the integration of systems". But really, they have very little idea.

Let's suppose somehow, they get a terrific advert written up, and the CVs start flying in. That's a really good start. Now they need to go through those CVs and work out which of these people they are going to invest their time in. Getting someone in for an interview will take time. There's the interview time of course, but as well as that, there's arranging a time that suits, and working out a range of questions that not only suit the role, but suit the candidate. They might want to ask about the candidate's time abroad, or why they left that job which sounded so good. All-up, I would guess that a single hour-long interview would take around 3 hours of effort.

So you can't interview everyone, you need to use CVs to filter them out. That's tough. You try to rank them according to a feel for whether one is better than another. But how do you do that? Is this person who has worked for a couple of big name consultancies better than that person who has a degree from a top university? Does it matter that this person has a few gaps in his CV? Lots of questions need to be considered.

Typically as a candidate, you need to be able to demonstrate very quickly that you are better than the crowd. Obviously if you have an outstanding employment history, have written books, that type of thing, then you may get through on reputation alone. But if you have a good reputation, then you're probably not applying for jobs anyway - the employers are probably chasing you directly. For the rest of us, it's much harder.

Certification can help I think. If someone gets two identical (-ish) CVs across their desk but can only get one in for an interview, does it help that one has achieved some level of certification? I think so. Does it help that one is a member of a professional society? I think so. It doesn't mean that the candidate is necessarily any better, but it ought to increase the odds of it. The person without the certification might not be good enough to get certified. Or they might not qualify for membership of a professional society. So I think employers will always lean towards the person who has these things.

When you get a certification from Microsoft, they send you a certificate in a folder. The folder says "How they know you know". And I think this is the key. Whilst certifications don't guarantee you know anything, I think they do go a long way. And after all, even if it's more like "How they can justify hiring you rather than the other guy", then surely that makes the certifications worthwhile.

I'm on the MS Developer Podcast

Rob Farley — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 01:36:00 GMT

I'm listening to myself right now on the The Microsoft Developer Show from The Podcast Network, being interviewed about certification. The link is http://msdev.thepodcastnetwork.com/2006/10/10/the-microsoft-developer-show-9-certification

I do talk too fast - that's a pain. I really need to work on that, especially if it's being recorded for a podcast. I don't talk so fast on the ones that I record myself (but they're not technical, and I'm just talking to myself, not to someone like Nick).

The show notes scare me a little. I see a mention of Dave Lemphers at 4:01. I like Dave a lot - great guy. When I saw his name there though, I thought "Oh, I don't remember mentioning Dave...", and wondered what it was about, considering some of his views on the MVP program.

Having listened to it, it's not too bad, except that I talk too long at the end (what - Rob talking too much? Can't be true...).

I'm happy to promote certification, and also to encourage people (both candidates and employers) to think higher of the certifications. After all, we really do need to know how people know.